


Birthday Present

by thedrowned (caelondian)



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-06 01:30:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11590215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caelondian/pseuds/thedrowned
Summary: Chloe, her father, and a smidge of Scott, Eli, Camile. This happens just after the Nakai abduction and such.





	Birthday Present

She felt as though she was being pressed down into her sleepiness, gravity pushing her into the alien's bed. Though her eyes were closed, numbers, symbols, designs flashed through her mind's eye. She could feel something, maybe someone, behind her, reading the symbols over he shoulder. She almost felt a little frustrated, still halfway between knowing and guessing.

She opened her eyes and saw her father. Her father was speaking with a woman in uniform, and he was signing a clipboard she held. He was smiling, his business smile, with no meaning but pleasantries, and the table at which he and Chloe were sitting was draped in a fine, white cloth. All around the table were dishes and cutlery of luxury, each imprinted with a seal of the United States, a tiny brown eagle clutching objects that shimmered with the mysterious alien numbers.

Chloe didn't know what to feel. She knew this was probably just a dream, but something about it seemed like it was a memory, pushing down the scanning stranger inside her mind. Finally the woman with the uniform left and her father turned to Chloe, her eyes picking up faintly mysterious features in his face. It was as if something was off, but her mind was telling her it was just a normal Pentagon brunch.

Nothing happened for a long time. Everything around Chloe was just very plain: people eating, chatting softly, birds chirping in the distance, rays of sunlight glittering around the wine glasses and gold-rimmed teacups. Everywhere, she could see those tiny, dancing, streaming symbols. But as soon as she looked at them, they would disappear from her direct glance. All the while, her father was just cheerily eating.

She watched him, almost pouting. Something wasn't right, but she felt a bit comfortable in this setting. Almost a surprise, he wasn't making a speech she edited, he wasn't telling her to become better at everything she did, he wasn't...even talking at all.

"Dad," she finally said, the words feeling very heavy and slow-moving from her mouth.

He stopped with a piece of lettuce hanging from his mouth to look at her. She didn't reply, but her facial expression changed enough to signal to him what she wanted. He quickly chewed and swallowed what remained in his mouth and quickly wiped his face before he presented himself to her. He took her hands, and it felt right. Like when she was very little, and he would hold her hands and dance in a circle before she leapt into a mountain of leaves, red-cheeked and scarf flying.

"Twinkle, twinkle little star," he began. He didn't sing the famous tune, but rather, almost sing-songedly told her the old poem. "How I wonder what you are."

"Dad?"

Something around her changed, but she couldn't turn her head. It was stuck, her eyes drawn to her loving father.

"Up above the world so high!" he exclaimed like he used to do, to catch her attention and get her excited, "Like a diamond in the sky."

The soft grip never left her hands, but everything around her began to grow dark and seemed to spin. It rumbled and shook, all around her father's very still, and smiling face. She became scared, her inability to look away frightening her. She was afraid something horrifying was going to burst out of her father, like in so many of her other dreams.

"When the blazing sun is gone, when he nothing shines upon," continued Mr. Armstrong, sweet and grinning, the sunbeams shining on his face, but bent and soft, like underwater, in Chloe's peripheral vision.

"Then you show your little light?" her father said in a question-like form and everything stopped. Chloe still could not move her eyes or her head, but her father's raised eyebrows filled her with sadness.

It was that look that he always gave her, that look of "And what happened with you to-day, sweetie?", like he truly, honestly wanted to know. It made her want to bury her head in his shoulder and sob; her father, there, in her dreams, singing that silly children's poem and scaring the daylights out of her.

He was asking for the rest.

"Twinkle, twinkle, all the night," Chloe obeyed, her voice yearning, and everything broke free. She felt as though she was floating away from the dream, everything spreading away from the scene of the Pentagon picnic. Her father could only beam in his loving way, and he pointed upwards, his eyes never leaving her line of sight.

As she floated off backwards, it never occurred to her that the sky should be something you ought to look at while the sun was shining. But something compelled her to, and she gasped in awe. The sunbeams grew brighter as she turned up her head, and they morphed into a light stream, giving way to what looked like a great shooting star that was slowly, but powerfully, beating across the sky. Behind the blaze of sky and sun sat the galaxy of a billion stars, twinkling almost simultaneously to similar beats.

Chloe desperately wanted to look back at her father, but couldn't force herself to do so. She felt she was being pulled back away from the scene, those horrible math equations and figures reappearing, nailing her back down into her bed where she had tried so hard to sleep. All she could hear was banging as the stars sputtered out, and when she finally opened her eyes to reality, she felt so incredibly heavy.

Matthew was leaning over her, trying to get her awake. His face was bright, almost happy.

"Chloe, you're not going to believe this," he gasped.

"What? What is it?" she asked, a little groggy still, though the pull was beginning to fade.

"Colonel Young said it was okay, so me and Private Cooper are going to take you up to the Observation Deck."

"Why? What's going on, Matthew?"

"It's better if I just show you."

He took Chloe's shoulder and toted her down the hall, followed closely by the private. A few stares were lifted to her, but it was nothing she cared for. She felt small, almost lost. She wasn't ready for so much excitement right after that upsetting dream.

As they took her into the Observation Deck, Eli and Camile were there, and they looked to her with weak smiles. Everyone was wary, but still trying to be polite. Matthew nodded to them and showed her to the space beyond the window. He didn't expect her to begin to cry.

The only thing Chloe could think of was TJ. She was the only one on board who said she had experienced something in a dream that seemed to come true. And the tortured Chloe felt she had just joined TJ's club as she peered out through glass and tears and saw the very same comet from her dream tearing across the black void while the clutch of shining diamonds pulsated almost harmoniously like the mix-matched sky that seemed to remind her of her father.

Matthew was confused, so he placed an arm around Chloe's shoulder, and the bewildered Camile came nearer, placing a hand on Chloe's forearm, and Eli came beside Scott and smiled big to her, shrugging his Eli shrug, telling her through his body language "Everything would be okay". And it was. When Chloe lifted her head, she was smiling too. Tears of sadness, tears of joy, she didn't care what they were. They felt good, and the view and friends on the deck reminded her of her father.

If he was the one who made the comet, she thanked him in his mind. It really was one of the best birthday presents she'd ever gotten.


End file.
